As much as 1,500 gallons of used motor oil leaked from an above-ground storage tank in Washington state into a creek that flows into the Yakima River, vital to the apple-growing state's agricultural hub, officials said on Monday.

The cause of the spill on Sunday from the tank at a former feed lot near Sunnyside, about 170 miles southeast of Seattle, was under investigation.

Department of Ecology spokeswoman Joye Redfield-Wilder said the oil posed a threat to otters, waterfowl and fish as well as orchards and other crops in the area.

"In a couple of weeks, the canals will all be full and (farmers) will be watering their crops and their orchards, so we want to get this cleaned up," Redfield-Wilder said.

Dozens of birds drop dead out of the sky in Maury County at the same time. A local pizza delivery driver says he has something to do with the fifty or so birds that turned up dead off North Field Lane Saturday. Russell Thomas contacted FOX17 after our story first aired.

Thomas says the birds were flying low and swooped in and bombed his brand new white KIA. He said there is minor damage to his car. Police turned the case over to the TWRA.

Comment: A dip into the archives covering the last 4 years of similar events:

Close to 500 garter snakes are getting settled in a new winter home, after their hibernation den was disturbed by construction in Delta, B.C.

Residents alerted crews reinforcing the dike near Beach Grove this week that there was a ball of sleeping snakes under some rocks, reported The Vancouver Sun.

Biologists were called in to rescue the serpents, who were then brought to the Wildlife Rescue Association of B.C. (WRA), said the group's Facebook page.

The snakes are cozy in groups of 20 in plastic tubs with damp wood shavings and a dish of distilled water, said the WRA. During hibernation, known as brumation, snakes drop their body temperature so they don't have to use much energy.

The washing ashore of three sperm whales in the last three days has taken fishermen and marine researchers along the east coast by surprise.

While the first dead whale was found near Puducherry on Friday, a second carcass was located at Alambaraikuppam near Marakkanam on Saturday with the third being found at Uyyalikuppam near Kalpakkam on Sunday.

The stranded whale at Uyyalikuppam was a male measuring 50 feet in length and weighing nearly 4 tonnes. The carcass found on Saturday at Alambaraikuppam was that of a female sperm whale which measured 35 feet and weighed nearly 3 tonnes. Both died of injuries suffered on the tail after getting entangled in large nets near the sea surface, said researchers.

A Pinole woman was being treated for life-threatening injuries Sunday after she was attacked and mauled by the family's pet pit bull, investigators said.

The 40-year-old resident was attacked inside the home on Silverado Drive, in the Pinole Valley area shortly before 10 a.m. and bitten on her legs, arms and face. Pinole police were able to secure the animal in the back yard before Pinole Fire Department paramedics administered "advanced life support" treatment.

The woman's wounds were so severe that she had to be flown by helicopter to the trauma center at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, said Steve Akre, the Pinole Fire battalion chief. He said there was a male resident inside the home at the time of the attack, but he was not injured.

The flood situation in Madagascar is worsening. The latest report from Madagascar's disaster management agency, the Bureau National de Gestion des Risques et des Catastrophes (BNGRC) said that further assessments of the flood disaster that struck on 26 February show that 19 people have been killed, 36,956 have been displaced and over 60,000 affected by the disaster.

517 houses have been destroyed and 1,698 damaged in the floods. BNGRC also report that the floods have damaged 6,339 hectares of rice fields.

Three regions of the country have been affected. Over 2,000 people have been displaced in Alaotra Mangoro region. The worst affected region is Analamanga where 18 of the deaths occurred, many of them around the country's capital, Antananarivo. The remaining fatality occurred in Vakinankaratra region.

A massive pipi bed in Whangarei harbour is dying and there are fears the change could destabilise the harbour - and Marsden Point itself, Radio NZ reports.

The volume of pipis on Mair Bank has slumped from 10,000 tonnes to less than 100 tonnes, sparking fears the massive sandbank, which protects the harbour entrance, will disappear.

The sandbank, shaped similar to a shark's tooth, lies just off Marsden Point. Locals previously waded out at low tide to scoop up the daily limit of 150 of the shellfish in a couple of minutes. But no more.

NIWA fisheries scientist, James Williams, said the decline had been drastic. Over the last four to five years the pipi population has collapsed.

He said the bank had been eroding from the south and gaining height; coinciding with an apparent absence of juvenile pipi.

"There was a huge biomass there of pipi, everywhere pretty much on the bank and sub-tidally of about 10,000 tonnes and that's been reduced to less than 100 tonnes from the 2014 survey," he said.

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There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

Scientists living under an oppressive regime
decide to clinically study the founders and supporters of evil regimes to determine what common factor is at play in the rise and propagation of man's inhumanity to man.